


A Fire Shared

by RS_Games



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, First War with Voldemort, Loneliness, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-01
Updated: 2017-11-01
Packaged: 2019-01-26 23:11:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12568292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RS_Games/pseuds/RS_Games
Summary: R/S Games 2017 - Day 27 - Team RemusThe war is over, and Sirius has burnt down the life they had been building together in a single, terrible act of betrayal. As the smoke clears, Remus struggles to come to terms with this new loneliness.(byfatpalomino)





	A Fire Shared

**Author's Note:**

> **Team:** Remus  
>  **Title:** A Fire Shared  
>  **Rating:** PG-13  
>  **Warnings:** alcohol mention, a single F-bomb, blink-and-you'll-miss it implied masturbation reference, far too much loneliness for any of our little hearts to bear  
>  **Genres:** Angst  
>  **Word Count:** 1600  
>  **Summary:** The war is over, and Sirius has burnt down the life they had been building together in a single, terrible act of betrayal. As the smoke clears, Remus struggles to come to terms with this new loneliness.  
>  **Notes:** Thank you to my readers. Writing this made me incredibly sad about Remus Lupin all over again. The title is also the title of [a poem](https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2010/jun/28/poem-week-fire-shared-didsbury) by Peter Didsbury.  
>  **Prompt:** #39 - "We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered.”  
>  \- from the play _Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead_ by Tom Stoppard

i.

He took the train back from Peter’s funeral. It was not his first time on a non-magical train: he had spent so many of the past few months learning to travel undercover, slipping unnoticed between worlds. Today of all days it was a relief be amongst Muggles. To be lonely but not alone. For a few hours, he was nobody.

As the train rattled quietly along its tracks, the half-familiar city buildings blended into rolling green-greys. Time, which he could usually rely upon waxing inexorably, which he usually felt ticking deep in his weary bones, had been juddering and stuttering unpredictably since Hallowe’en. The idea of Apparating anywhere made him ill. He needed to feel every mile of distance as it stretched, elastic, between himself and yet another friend he would never see again. He needed space to remember, to prepare himself, to bridge the gap between the world he had always expected to be living in, and today.

He could have walked all the way to Yorkshire and still not have been ready for the flat. He opened the door, studiously ignoring the coat already hanging in the hallway as he hung up his own, and went to put the kettle on. It was only after dumping his small, sad bag in the bedroom that he realised, with a sharp bark of a laugh, that he had put out two mugs by the merrily boiling kettle.

 

ii. kindling

It was the spring of their sixth year. Hogwarts was home enough to take for granted, with their friendship knitted into the very fabric of the place. Remus was falling, the ground always rising to meet him, the trees blossoming giddily, a kaleidoscope on the backs of his eyelids. Sirius Black had been emblazoned across his entire field of vision for what felt like forever.

It wasn’t just Sirius, but it was often Sirius. After years of painful involuntary transformations, Remus was appalled to discover yet another way for his body to betray him. Some days, his mind would wander, perfectly appropriately, to the sway of that pretty Ravenclaw’s hips as she reached for a book on the top shelf, or to the time Madam Rosmerta winked at him behind James’ back. Then one morning, half-awake, unguarded, he would catch a glimpse of Sirius’ bare shoulders and nearly fall out of bed in his hurry to the bathroom, heart pounding in miserable delight.

So bright, so easy, and so _casual_. He wanted to punch him, almost did once or twice. What must it be like, to have nothing to hide? To be able to cup one’s secrets and treasures in a cool palm and hold them out to the world, knowing they would be taken with a smile? Sirius’ generosity was boundless, careless, and Remus wanted to crack his gifts between his teeth, torn between the desire to consume and destroy.

Girls loved Sirius and he loved them back with that exasperating casualness. Or at the very least, he loved the attention. Eventually, drunk in the wee hours in Gryffindor common room, he came out to the three of them – James, Peter, Remus – glint in his eyes part Firewhiskey, mostly defiance.

 _But_ , Remus thought.

 _Oh_ , Remus thought.

Their eyes met, then James was leaning over and manfully patting Sirius on the back, and Peter was hemming and hawing his way through some joke. Remus gazed gratefully back into his own glass, which was shaking almost imperceptibly. There came a terrible urge to laugh. He took a lengthy swig instead. A chasm was stretching beneath his feet, making him lightheaded.

_Well, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it._

 

iii.

“I can’t believe,” Remus said aloud to the empty flat, “that I didn’t touch him for a whole year.” They’d barely touched this entire year gone, either. He stared down at his hands, splayed flat against the table. If he shifted his weight the barest amount, the whole structure wobbled alarmingly, but then nothing seemed especially stable lately. The walls of the flat cocooned him in stale air, and some days he woke up and the ceiling looked closer than it had been the night before. He caught himself on doorframes, tripped on books he didn’t recognise. He tried reading them, but never took in the sense of more than a paragraph. The flat expanded and collapsed around him, breathing for him during the long hours he felt he might never open a window again. The occasional owl arrived – he knew his dad would like to see him – but it was hard to shake the feeling that the Remus they were asking after was a stranger, or an acquaintance with whom he was not on particularly friendly terms.

Sirius’ fingerprints were seared into his skin. He wanted to wash them off. He wanted to lie perfectly still, staring at the ceiling, to make sure they would remain preserved for the weeks, months, years to come.

“Of course I’m okay with it,” he’d said.

“Moony, you haven’t come near me all fucking year! Like you’re going to catch something if I so much as touch you!”

 _I really, really want you to touch me_ , he thought, months before he managed to say it out loud. Another bridge to cross.

They had wasted so much. The waiting was a waste, the touching a waste, promises made and eroded and broken and wasted. So many lives, wasted.

“I wasn’t brave enough,” Remus said. Around him, the empty flat sighed.

 

iv. aflame

“What if we get sick of each other?”

They were lying in bed. It was, improbably, the third time they had slept together and Remus felt delirious with it all, sick already, feverish. It was a dream he wanted to last forever, no matter how it burned him up.

Sirius snorted a laugh. “No human being has ever been sick of me. My charm is beyond reckoning. This is elementary stuff, Moony, and I expected better of you.”

“Such a charming noise, just then,” Remus agreed, rolling over and propping himself up on one elbow to look at the other man. The sheets were cool on his back, though Sirius radiated warmth from the other side of the bed. Their thighs were still touching, only just. The press of skin was pleasantly clammy. “Also, werewolf.”

“Hmm?” Sirius’ face was buried in Remus’ neck, and the murmur reverberated against his skin. It was a moment before he collected himself enough to answer.

“Human beings may find you infinitely charming, but werewolves are almost certainly immune. It could be that there is, in fact, a limit.”

“Well… I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it,” Sirius said agreeably.

“What if,” Remus began, but then Sirius pressed himself a little closer, and the hundreds of questions died on his lips.

 

v.

He never actually went to the funeral. Couldn’t face Peter’s mother, or anybody else. His imagination summoned pitchforks, or worse, pity in the eyes of those gathered. Remus was a poisoned well. He lived alongside a traitor, a murderer, had slept beside him, woken next to him. If Sirius was soul and Remus was conscience, both had proven catastrophically faulty, twisted beyond repair. And yet, he would give anything to see him pad sleepily into the kitchen again. During those last months, barely speaking, touch-starved, they had still shared a pot of coffee and the Daily Prophet most mornings. Remus would watch him from behind the sports section: so handsome and still so sure.

He didn’t answer the door. The owls stopped coming. The parties were over, and the world was returning to normal. People he had nearly died for returned to their warm hearths and beloved families. None of them were eager to invite the werewolf for tea.

The graveyard had emptied slowly. Those who remained were keen to celebrate the life of a hero awarded a posthumous Order of Merlin. It was something of an end: Voldemort gone, a betrayal avenged, the villain jailed. All the ends tied, except for a couple of stragglers. Remus pictured the baby with a pang. They were the spares. He would have liked to have seen him again. He supposed Lily’s sister would tell him about his parents, but who would tell him about his godfather?

The sun sank low, casting his shadow wild and dark across the turf when he came to stand before the fresh grave.

“I never was a very good friend to you, was I?” he said. “I ought to have…”

He thought he might cry, but he didn’t.

 

vi. embers

It is twelve years later before he lets himself feel it. The ache of the full moon never truly leaves the body, but the rest of it ripples through him so violently he cries out.

He should cry for his dead friends, or for poor Harry, or for himself even, but there is something about this place, about its ghosts, about the moon on the stone.

 _Sirius_ , he thinks. _Siriussiriussirius_. His dreams have been full of hands and teeth and hair since the first night. Dread lies low in his gut, but there is also a swooping, swooning thing of something like hope.

When he sees his name – _Sirius Black_ – crawling across the map they made with their own hands – a memory of heads pressed close together, James and Sirius’ dark hair indistinguishable, whispers tumbling over one another into a hiss of excitement at their own cleverness – when he sees his name he remembers the shape of it on his own lips.

His need is suddenly so desperate, it could claw its way out of his skin, and perhaps that is why he does not notice the signs. Parchment under his fingertips is no longer enough. Time stutters again, and as he hurries across the grounds he is decades ago, he is twenty-two, he is seventeen. His hand comes away from his face wet and he is startled to see it is not blood, but tears.


End file.
